Today, vision analysis has a growing impact on production, production control, and quality control issues within many industries. The Diamond and Gem industry is no exception, and has adopted digital imaging and vision analysis technology to improve the efficiency of manufacturing processes and improve quality controlling stations. Examples are the high tech computer measuring devices that have taken over the proportion measuring from classic instruments, such as the Gemological Institute of America Proportionscope. Powerful computers and high resolution digital images are now available and have triggered the development of more highly sophisticated vision analysis tools and advanced vision analysis software programs.
The theoretical and practical knowledge in the vision industry is vast, but applying these optical tools and vision analysis knowledge to diamond clarity grading is rather new. There are many considerations in capturing a suitable clarity image, such as lighting and the cost of hardware. Some of these considerations even involve compromises with how else the image can be used. A detailed image of only the grade setting inclusion may be useful for grading clarity, but capturing the whole diamond allows for a broader range of applications, such as placing a more attractive image on a report or capturing symmetry faults. Capturing the whole image is also critical for determining the relative size of the inclusion.
In view of the rapidly growing technological landscape of vision analysis and digital imaging acquisition, developing support tools for clarity grading via vision analysis could be particularly helpful. Such tools, may for example, help to better understand the visual clarity grading decision processes, and also help provide consistency in these processes by providing these tools to grader trainees uniformly. Other methodologies such as x-ray scanning or infrared imaging are inherently limited since they cannot duplicate what a diamond grader sees in the laboratory, whereas vision analysis can replace the human eye with a camera, and a computer application can simulate the decision making processes. The alternative methodologies also are often too costly to consider. Accordingly, there is currently a need for a method and system for analyzing a gem via vision analysis software in support of clarity grading activities.